How to Build a Deliverables List for a Video Project

Key Takeaways

• Every line needs a spec, a destination and an approver. Missing any one of the three is where the argument happens.
• "Social cuts" is not a deliverable. Count them, name the aspect ratios, name the durations, name the platforms.
• Captions, thumbnails, stills and a versioned archive are real work and are almost always assumed rather than scoped.
• Write the exclusions next to the list, because everything unlisted is assumed included by whoever is paying.
• Build the list at kickoff, not at delivery. At delivery it is a negotiation; at kickoff it is a menu.
• The destination determines the spec. Ask where it will play before you agree what it is.

Spec, Destination, Approver

Take any line on a deliverables list and check it against three questions. If you cannot answer all three, it is not finished.

The specification is what the file is. Aspect ratio, duration, resolution, frame rate, audio configuration, whether captions are burned in or supplied separately, whether there is a version with no text for later localisation. Precision here is not pedantry; each of these is a different export and some are different edits.

The destination is where it will play. Not "social", which is four platforms with different requirements, but Instagram Reels, or a LinkedIn feed post, or a trade-show loop, or the homepage hero. Destination is what determines spec, which is why it comes first in the conversation and last in most lists.

The approver is who says it is done. Usually the same person for everything, and occasionally not: a regional lead may own the localised versions, legal may own anything with a claim in it. Naming the exception at the start prevents the week where a finished file waits on someone nobody thought to include.

The check that catches most problems: read the line to yourself and ask whether two reasonable people could produce different files from it. If yes, the line is not specific enough. "A short version" fails. "One 30 second cut, 16x9, no captions, for the pre-roll placement" passes.

Count Everything

The single most common failure is the uncounted plural.

"Social cuts", "some stills", "a few teasers", "language versions". Each of these is a number nobody has agreed on, and in the client's head the number is larger than in yours. It costs nothing to fix at the start and a weekend to fix at the end.

Write a number on every plural. Three social cuts, not social cuts. Ten stills, not a selection. Two language versions, not localisation.

When the number genuinely is not known yet, price the unit. "Additional 9x16 cuts at [amount] each" converts an unknown into a menu, and it means the answer to "can we get three more?" is a cheerful yes rather than a difficult conversation.

Watch for the plural hiding inside a singular. "A film" often means a film plus a trailer plus a teaser plus a cutdown, because that is what the last agency delivered. Ask directly whether anything shorter is expected alongside the main piece.

The Items Everyone Forgets

These are real work and they are almost never on the first draft of a list.

Captions and subtitles. A burned-in caption version is a separate export and often a separate design pass. An SRT or VTT file is a separate deliverable again. Platforms increasingly need one or both, and neither is free.

Thumbnails and cover frames. A YouTube thumbnail is a design job, not a screenshot. A Reels cover frame is a different crop. Both get requested at the last minute because they are invisible until upload.

Stills. Frame grabs are cheap; usable stills often are not, because the frame that looks right in motion is rarely the frame that looks right paused.

A textless or clean version. Any project that might be localised or reused later wants a master with no burned-in text. Producing it after the fact means reopening the project; producing it during delivery costs minutes.

The archive. A versioned, named archive of the project and its assets, handed over or stored. If the client expects to come back in a year, this is a deliverable, and if nobody names it, it is a favour you do badly under time pressure.

Music and stock licences. Not a file, but a deliverable in the sense that someone has to receive proof of what is licensed and for how long. This is the one that becomes a legal problem rather than a scheduling one.

Destination Determines Spec

The reason to ask where before you agree what is that platforms impose the answer.

A 30 second cut for a paid placement has a hard duration limit and often a specification sheet from the platform. A homepage hero probably wants no audio by default and a loop point. A trade-show screen may be an unusual ratio and will be viewed from six metres away, which changes type size. A LinkedIn feed post is watched muted by default, which makes captions mandatory rather than nice.

Ask for the placement, not the platform, when money is involved. Paid placements have specification documents. Getting that document in week one is much better than reformatting in week six because the ad platform rejected the file.

When the destination is genuinely unknown, deliver the most flexible master and price the adaptations separately. A clean 16x9 master at full resolution adapts to almost anything; a burned-in, music-locked, 30 second vertical cut adapts to nothing.

Write the Exclusions Beside It

A deliverables list that lists only deliverables leaves everything else ambiguous, and ambiguity resolves toward more work.

Add a short block underneath. Not included: additional aspect ratios beyond those listed, additional language versions, subtitle files beyond the listed formats, thumbnail design, additional revision rounds beyond two, ongoing hosting, and raw footage.

Raw footage deserves its own mention because it is the most commonly assumed deliverable in video. Whether the client receives the rushes is a real commercial question with storage implications, and it should be answered explicitly at kickoff rather than discovered at the end.

Price the exclusions where you can. A list with prices next to the excluded items is a menu, and a menu produces sales rather than disputes.

A Worked List

For a two minute brand film with a social rollout, the list a client can actually approve:

Nine lines, all countable, all with a home. The version of this list that causes trouble reads: hero film, social cuts, some stills, captions.

Note that the cutdown has two approvers, because it carries a product claim. That is the kind of detail that costs a week if it is discovered at delivery and costs nothing if it is written at kickoff.

What Tooling Helps

The list is a table. A spreadsheet, a page in your project tool, or a table in the statement of work all work, and the format matters far less than whether the client approved it in writing.

If you use a project management tool, make each deliverable a task with the spec in the description and the approver as a watcher, so status is visible without asking. Asana, Monday, ClickUp and Notion all do this adequately.

The list and the approval are two different artifacts, and most projects only keep the first one. The table says a 9x16 cut with burned-in captions was scoped. It does not say Priya approved version three of it on 14 August. When a dispute arrives, the second document is the one that ends it, and it usually does not exist because approval happened in a reply to an email thread that has since been buried.

Three things to put somewhere, and where

For the third row, a review platform that carries an approval state per version does the recording for you. Frame.io is the standard when an editor works in Premiere or After Effects, because its panels put the notes where the work happens. Framekit is the flat-priced alternative when the reviewer is the client rather than a post house: comments land on a timecode, versions stack with exactly one current, and each version holds its own status of needs review, in progress, changes requested, or approved. Either way, the point is that "approved" becomes a field attached to a specific version rather than a sentence in an inbox.

Delivery is worth separating from review, too. The review link is iterative and should expire. The delivery link is final and needs download control, because a master file and a social cut have different audiences inside the client's company. Handing over a shared-drive folder collapses both into one permission and leaves no record of what was actually sent. A delivery gallery or page with viewing and downloading as separate toggles fixes that, and takes about a minute to set up per project.

Storyflow is our product and it is not the tool for this. It has no task management, no status tracking, no assignees and no approval workflow, so the list itself belongs in a spreadsheet or a project tool. The adjacent job it does is upstream: holding the brief, the references and the decisions on one canvas so the reason a deliverable exists is recoverable when someone asks in week six why there are two vertical cuts. Paid-only during early access, with the Free plan landing before the end of 2026, and anyone a paid member invites to a board joins free now.

Framekit is also ours, and it is honest to say it does not build the list either. It has no task management and no assignees. It covers the two rows underneath: the approval record and the delivery. Free includes video review with 2GB of video storage and unlimited client galleries with 3GB of photo storage; paid tiers run $9 to $39 per month, flat per account.

The Bottom Line

Deliverables lists fail quietly. Nobody argues about them at the start, which is exactly why they are worth twenty minutes at the start.

Give every line a spec, a destination and an approver. If a line is missing one, that is where the week six conversation will happen.

Put a number on every plural, and price the unit when the number is genuinely unknown.

Scope the invisible items: captions in both forms, thumbnails, stills, a textless master, the archive and the licences.

Ask where before you agree what, because the destination writes the specification.

Then put the exclusions next to the list, priced, so the extras are a menu rather than a dispute.

A deliverable nobody named a destination for is a deliverable you will make twice.